Europe's inner demons

One has only to examine the stories one by one to see how groundless this supposition is. Until recently it was thought that the Paulicians of Armenia, whom John of Ojun accused of Devil-worship in the eighth century, were Dualists; but the latest research has shown that at that date they were nothing of the kind.⁽⁶¹⁾ The Bogomiles accused in the eleventh century were indeed Dualists — but not a word, in the couple of paragraphs allocated to them, suggests that Psellos was aware of the fact. Psellos was in Constantinople, the Bogomiles were in Thrace, and he knew so little about them that he even got their name wrong.⁽⁶²⁾

And in the West too accusations of Devil-worship were hurled at sects which knew nothing of Dualism. Already the heretical group discovered at Orléans in 1022 was so accused; and the stereotype of the Devil-worshipping sect was fully developed, in every detail, by 1100. But historians are generally agreed that the Dualist religion was unknown in the West before 1140 at the earliest.⁽⁶³⁾

Between the middle of the twelfth and the middle of the thirteenth century that form of the Dualist religion known as Catharism did flourish in the West, and it was widely interpreted as a cult of Satan— witness the preposterous etymology which derived the very name “Cathar” from the worship of the demonic cat.⁽⁶⁴⁾

Is it possible that Catharism, at least, sometimes involved Devil-worship?

Towards the close of the twelfth century a French monk called Rudolf Ardent summarized the belief of the Cathars. According to him, they held that, whereas God created all invisible things, the Devil created all visible ones; so they worshipped the Devil as the creator of their bodies.⁽⁶⁵⁾ About the same time a French chronicler recorded the confession which two Catharist leaders were supposed to have made after spending some months as captives of the papal legate: “they said that Satan and Lucifer is the creator of heaven and earth, of all things visible and invisible…”.⁽⁶⁶⁾

No doubt it was such reports as these that gave rise to the notion of a Luciferan doctrine. They must also have lent fresh credibility to the age-old tales of a Devil-worshipping sect. But as evidence for the existence of a Luciferan doctrine or a Devil-worshipping sect they are valueless, for they grossly distort what Cathars really believed.

We have reliable information concerning the real beliefs of the Cathars — including some Catharist writings.⁽⁶⁷⁾ Like other Dualists, they were convinced that the material universe was created by an evil spirit — in effect, the Devil — who still dominated it. But so far from worshipping the Devil they were passionately concerned to escape from his clutches. That aspiration was the very heart of their religion. For souls were not created by the Devil but by God. Indeed, in the Catharist view souls are the angels who fell from heaven; they have been imprisoned in one body after another, and they yearn to escape from the material world and re-enter the heaven of pure spirituality. The morality of the Catharist perfecti

— their condemnation of marriage, their horror of procreation, their vegetarianism and fasting — reflects their total rejection of the material world, imagined as a demonic creation. To come to terms with the flesh, to accept the world of matter — that is to reveal oneself as a servant of the Devil; and to be a servant of the Devil is to be incapable of salvation.

There is, then, no reason to think that, even in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, tales of a Devil-worshipping sect reflected something that really existed amongst the Cathars. Moreover in the fifteenth century, long after the Cathars had been exterminated those Bible-studying Christians the Waldensians were still being persecuted as “Luciferans”.

Finally, we must ask ourselves whether intelligent, educated and devout men could have accepted that a cult of Satan existed, if they had not had good grounds for thinking so. Several modern historians have argued, and have convinced many readers, that such a thing is inconceivable. But they are in error. The same people who accepted that a cult of Satan existed, also accepted that Satan miraculously materialized at the celebration of his cult, usually in the form of a gigantic animal. The two beliefs were practically inseparable; and if the one seems to lack evidential value, so should the other.